The Phantom Lecterphile
by Screaming Ferret
Summary: Teen drama with bite. A sequel to Hannibal Family Values.
1. The Return of the Au Pair

AN: This takes place roughly ten years after the events of _Hannibal Family Values_. If you haven't read that, this will make little sense until you have ;) 

Disclaimer: Lecter and Starling belong to Thomas Harris. Everyone else (barring Prince Charles) is mine.

**The Return of the Au Pair**

The cacophonous jangling of the front doorbell rose over the thud of heavy metal music from upstairs. Dr Hannibal Lecter crushed out his cigar in the marble ashtray at his elbow, and gracefully rose to his feet. He straightened his smoking jacket, winked at Clarice Starling, who sat curled in an armchair with a magazine, and sauntered to the front door. The doorbell chimed again. Opening the door a few inches, the world's most notorious serial killer paused for effect, and intoned "Well hello," in his most deadly whisper.

The effect was not entirely lost on the woman on the other side of the door, who blinked away her dazed expression and offered a greeting. "Hello, Doctor Blake."

Dr Lecter threw wide the door and favoured his guests with his most charming smile. "Emma! It is a pleasure to see you again, my dear. How was your flight?" He stepped aside to allow Emma Morton, nee Robinson and her son to enter.

"Reasonable. The food was awful, though." Emma deposited her suitcases in the surprisingly cavernous hallway. There was that moment of awkward silence between two people who have not met for a long time, and who upon meeting, do not know quite what to say. It did not help, Emma mused, that the good doctor evidentlystill possessed the capacity to scare the living daylights out of her, regardless of his age or hers. She smiled at him, and turned to the small boy clutching at the hem of her coat. "Say hello to the doctor, Tommy."

"So this is young Thomas," Dr Lecter said, crouching down to greet the boy.

Thomas Hannibal Morton regarded his namesake steadily for a few moments, before warily proffering a sticky bag of sweets.

Dr Lecter shook his head. "No, no, my boy," he said genially. "You eat them all up."

"Are you a real doccor?" Thomas asked, fishing around in the bag for another sweet.

"I am indeed."

"D'you make people better?" Thomas enquired, seriously.

"That's a matter of opinion, my boy." The doctor smiled at the child, and went to the foot of the staircase. He breathed deeply for a few moments, before letting loose a bellow that would not have been out of place on a parade ground. "Kids! We have guests!"

The heavy metal faltered for a moment, and Emma heard a door creak open. A tall, shadowed figure appeared at the top for a moment, gazed at the little group in the hallway, and disappeared into the darkness once more.

"They'll be down in a moment," Dr Lecter said. "Shall we adjourn to the kitchen? I believe, ah, Cassandra is putting the kettle on."

It would be easier all round if they didn't have to play roles anymore, Emma reflected. But she wasn't entirely sure that Thomas would understand. His grandmother really didn't need to hear about his visit to Uncle Hannibal and Auntie Clarice.

They were ushered into the large, spotless kitchen. Clarice Starling leant against the worktop beside the steaming kettle. Emma paused on the threshold, and the two women studied each other for a moment. There was more silver in Starling's long hair, but her delicate beauty remained intact. Starling smiled broadly and came around the long oak table. "Emma! It's good to see you again," she murmured, enfolding the younger woman in a quick hug.

The remainder of her greeting was interrupted by the thunder of feet coming down the stairs and across the hall. Lecter Senior, his wife and the former au pair all turned to behold three teenagers at the kitchen door. They had all sounded fairly elephantine on the stairs, but Emma suspected that the majority of the noise had been made by the tall, slender girl in nu-rocks and purple jeans. She slid smoothly past her brothers and regarded Emma with a grin. Emma stared her with some astonishment, as her hair was as purple as her jeans.

Jade swept into the kitchen and seized her former nanny in a fierce hug. "You should have visited ages ago," she said. "We thought you were never going to come back."

Emma didn't have the heart to tell them that she'd very nearly stayed in Ulan Bator.

It was as if a dam had broken. Once Jade had put her down, Emma prepared to be mobbed by the two looming boys. The shorter, stockier of the two elbowed past the other, and Emma found herself looking into the hugely beaming face of Tycho, now thirteen and just beginning to sport acne. Always more demonstrative that his older brother, Tycho planted a very Italian kiss on each of her cheeks, before relinquishing her to Gabriel. That young man rather stiffly held out his hand. Emma took it and was dragged into a quick, slightly embarrassed hug. "We thought we'd done something wrong," Gabriel said, smirking slightly.

"You? Never." Emma returned his smirk.

Order slowly returned to the gathering as people began to find seats around the table. All, that is, save Dr Lecter, who stood by the fridge, looking rather hurt. "Don't I get a hug?" he asked, injured.

Emma looked at him carefully, trying to decide if he was being serious or not. She never could tell. He gazed back, all innocence. She summoned up her courage, crossed the kitchen and very gingerly hugged him. A powerful arm wound its way around her shoulders and tightened. Emma felt her heartbeat accelerate, and sternly suppressed a cringe. "Now that wasn't so bad, was it?" he murmured in her ear just as he released her a few seconds later. Emma retreated with all the seemliest haste she could muster and gave him a tentative smile

"Stop teasing her, Hector." Starling thrust a large mug of hot tea into Emma's hands. She took it gratefully and sank onto one of the kitchen chairs. It wasn't that she disliked the doctor, entirely the reverse, in fact. She just liked him better from a safe distance.

"Was I teasing?" he asked mildly, settling into a chair. Leaning back, he stretched out his legs and crossed them elegantly at the ankles. Regarding the homey scene with perfect benevolence, the doctor sipped his tea.

The small silence that descended around the table was broken by a childish giggle of delight, and the familiar sound of Starling's voice raised in an exasperated scold.

"Tycho! You'll make him sick if give him any more."

Guiltily, Emma realised that she had been neglecting her son, and looked over to see Tycho industriously feeding chocolate digestive biscuits to Thomas. The small boy's sticky smile indicated that he entirely approved of the affair. The smile was quickly replaced by a frown as both his mother and Auntie Cassandra descended upon him with tissues. Wriggling out of Starling's grasp, Thomas headed for the back door and turned with his hand on the door handle. "Outside?" he inquired hopefully.

"An excellent idea," Dr Lecter proclaimed, rising to his feet. "It is a beautiful afternoon, a rare beast here in London. Shall we?"

They did. And as Emma watched Tycho and Gabriel engage Thomas in a game of football while the shadows lengthened across the lawn, she became aware that Starling was unusually tense. Watching her out of the corner of her eye, Emma saw that she cast frequent glances at the house behind theirs. It overlooked their garden and kitchen, and Emma noted the occasional flutter of white in one of the upstairs windows.

"What is it?" She asked quietly, leaning across to Starling.

Clarice shrugged, ostensibly keeping her eyes on the football game. "The new neighbour. I can't decide if she's got a crush on Hannibal, or if she's just nosey."

Dr Lecter smirked. "You should see the curtains twitch when I sunbathe."

"Well, you get neighbours like that everywhere," Emma said matter-of-factly.

"It is behaviour that I would prefer to – discourage," the doctor said softly. Emma winced.

The sun began to set, and no more flickers of white appeared in the opposite windows. Thomas, growing tired, gave up with football and returned to his mother.

"We've prepared the guest rooms for you both," Starling said as Emma picked him up.

"Thanks," she said gratefully. "It's time this young man had his tea and went to bed."

However, the alphabet spaghetti was not entirely a success, as Thomas fell asleep halfway through his meal. Emma scooped him into her arms, and turned to Starling with a quizzical expression. The former FBI agent returned from her motherly trip down Memory Lane and gave directions to the room prepared for Thomas's use. As Emma left, Clarice looked over at Dr Lecter. The soft smile on her face was as easy to read as an open large-print children's primer, and the half-formed comment on her lips got no further than that in the face of Hannibal Lecter's flat-out rejection of the subject he just _knew_ she was going to raise.

"No," he said, returning to his perusal of _The Times._

"Hannibal, you don't even know what I was going to say," Starling protested.

"Don't I?" He folded his paper and set it down next to Thomas's abandoned spaghetti. "You were going to begin with remarking on how adorable young Thomas is."

Starling opened her mouth to protest, but Lecter carried on. "You were going to follow that up by adding that it is nice to have a child around the house again."

She glared at him. "I was?"

"You were."

Clarice sniffed. There was really nothing she could say in her defence, and she knew it. The infuriating thing was, he knew it too.

"And then, I believe, you were going to remind me of how wonderful our three were when they were Thomas's age. And while I agree with the first two points of your no doubt hypothetical argument, I would remind _you _of Tycho's distressing teething habits, the unfortunate demise of Mogs One and Two, and little Gabriel's unseemly interest in anything with hot coals. And we both know what Jade was like when she was five…"

"All right, I was fishing." Clarice sighed and began to clear away the remains of Thomas's dinner.

He smiled fondly at her. "Darling, this fish isn't biting. I have done my duty to the human race."

"Poor bastards," Clarice muttered.

"I shall pretend that I didn't hear that." The doctor picked up the paper again.

"You know," Clarice mused as she scraped alphabet pasta into the bin, "I'm not even sure if you still _could_…"

Dr Lecter threw the paper at her and feigned a sulk until she came close enough to capture. Sprawled across his lap, Starling laughed into his chest has he held her close, then shivered as his lips grazed across her jaw line and ear. "I shall be forced to debunk _that_ theory later, my dear," he purred.

"Bring it on," Clarice told him, still giggling. The doctor smiled.

Upstairs, Emma regarded her sleeping son with a smile not unlike the one Dr Lecter had remarked upon Starling's face, and then she sighed. She was lucky, she supposed, that children possessed a natural capacity for adapting to new circumstances. Given the upheaval in his life that Thomas had endured over the past two years, she was glad he wasn't any older, or he'd be swinging from the chandeliers. She still felt like screaming, sometimes. She had to laugh, really. After the events in Florence a decade ago, she had thought that there was nothing in this world that could faze her.

Smiling ruefully at memories both good and bad, Emma drew the duvet up around Thomas's shoulders and kissed him goodnight.

"Is he asleep?" Jade whispered from the doorway.

Emma turned and saw her leaning casually against the doorpost. The purple jeans had vanished in favour of a long, black skirt and skull-embossed top. "Yep."

"I'll keep the music down, then," Jade said with a lazy grin. "Off out in a bit, anyway."

"Oh, that's nice. Where to?" Emma turned off the light and they left the room.

"No idea." Jade shrugged. Emma caught a whiff of something familiar, and looked suspiciously into the young woman's eyes. Yes, her pupils _were_ dilated.

"You can tell, can't you?" Jade asked, mortified. "Is it obvious?"

"A little," Emma told her, smirking. "Maybe some more spray?"

"Dad is going to kill me," Jade moaned, hurrying back to her room.

Emma grinned a little. "I doubt it," she called after the retreating figure. "With his sense of smell, he probably already knows." There was another paranoid little moan from the room three doors down. Laughing, Emma headed downstairs.

Perhaps an hour later, while Emma, Starling and Lecter sat in the sitting room watching a nature documentary, the thunder of dainty feet in size seven combat boots heralded the arrival of Jade in the hallway.

"I'm off out," she called breezily as she passed by the open lounge door.

"Well, where are you going?" Starling enquired, rising to her feet and intercepting her daughter by the front door. In the lounge, Dr Lecter scowled and glared out of the window at the large, blue BMW that had pulled up outside.

"Jacob's taking me to the cinema," Jade explained, edging past her mother and opening the door.

"You are to be home by one o'clock," Dr Lecter called.

Jade sighed. "Mum, can't you somehow remind him that I'm seventeen?"

"Your father has an excellent memory. No doubt he will remember that you are seventeen when you are eighteen. Then, you can do as you please." Starling held the door open for her eldest. "One o'clock. And have a good time."

In the lounge, Emma observed Jade sliding into the passenger seat of the big Beamer. "So Mummy and Daddy have money, then?" she asked of Starling as she resumed her seat beside the doctor.

Starling glanced out of the window. "Apparently his father plays polo with Prince Charles."

"Oh Good Lord." Emma considered the implications of that for a moment, and immediately wished she hadn't. "I had no idea Jade moved in that sort of circle…"

"She won't be moving in any sort of circle if she's not back by one AM," Dr Lecter said cheerfully, not taking his eyes from the on-screen tiger sharks.

Three AM. The house was silent, and only the hum of distant traffic served to cover the sound of the front door slowly creaking open. Guiltily, Jade peeked into the hallway. It was dark. She slipped inside and edged the door closed again. The soft click of the lock seemed to echo throughout the building, and she winced. She tiptoed, insofar as one can in combat boots, towards the kitchen. Slightly stoned and a little drunk, Jade was preoccupied with making as little noise as possible, which was why she did not notice the tiny sliver of light under her father's study door. She did notice, however, when the door was flung wide and light blazed across the hallway. Freezing to the spot, she beheld her father standing there, frowning. He wielded a book in one hand, and brandished the other under her nose.

"You're late."

Jade gulped. "I, um, sort of forgot the time…"

"You forgot the time." There was flat disbelief in his voice, and Jade couldn't help but flinch. She knew how much he despised untruths.

"I'm sorry, Dad," she whispered. "It was a big party after the film. Everyone was there, all my friends. I wanted to hang out for a bit, and spend some time with Jacob. You know?" She hoped that he did.

Dr Lecter considered his daughter, standing there with an abject expression on her face. He relented. "Have you eaten?"

"I was going to make a sandwich…" she trailed off, hopefully.

"Make your sandwich and go to bed," he told her, allowing a flicker of a smile to cross his face. Relief blossomed in her answering grin.

"So what were you doing down here?" she asked, for the sake of conversation.

"Waiting for you, and reading a little." Dr Lecter shooed her towards the kitchen.

"What about?" Jade glanced at the book. It was from his cookery collection. "A new recipe?"

"You could say that." He flicked on the kitchen light and set the book down on the table. Jade saw that he had marked several places. She headed for the fridge, the munchies taking over.

"Anything interesting?" she called over her shoulder as she rummaged through the shelves.

"Something spicy featuring testicles," the doctor said blandly.

Setting the plate of ham down on the side, Jade turned to her father and caught his crocodile smile. "Dad!" she protested. "That is _not_ funny."

"Did I say it was?" Winking at his daughter, Dr Lecter left her to it and headed upstairs to bed.


	2. Best Laid Plans

**A/N:** It's been a while... However, on with the show. Updates will (hopefully, barring accident or the will of the Internet gods) be reasonably regular. Happy Christmas ;)

**Disclaimer:** Lecter and Starling are the intellectual property of Thomas Harris. Emma and the kids are the intellectual property of me. Go me.

The Phantom Lecterphile - Chapter 2: Best Laid Plans

The sound of youthful laughter and splashing woke Emma from a sound sleep. It took a moment for her to collect her thoughts and remember where she was. The bed was too soft and the ceiling too high to be home... Ah yes. The Lecters.

Rising, she donned her dressing gown and went to the window. Twitching back the curtains caused glorious late summer sunlight to pour through the indow. Out in the garden, Gabriel, Tycho and Thomas were having a water fight with the garden hose and a peculiar looking contraption that looked like a cross between a mad scientist's chemistry set and something out of Star Trek.

She glanced at the clock. It was nearly midday.

When Emma arrived downstairs, she found Starling lounging at her ease in a garden deckchair on the patio. She watched her sons entertain Thomas with a nearly wistful smile on her face.

'Morning,' Starling said, tearing her gaze away from the happy little scene.

Emma nodded a greeting, and looked around. 'Where's the doctor?' she asked. He made a habit of lurking in unexpected corners and sneaking up behind her. She supposed it amused him to see her jump. It amused the rest of his family, too, although they were usually charitable enough not to laugh until she had fled.

'He has business in Oxford today, he left early.' Starling shrugged. 'I don't suppose he'll be back until tomorrow.'

There was an elephantine crash from within the kitchen. Starling sighed theatrically and rose to her feet to go and investigate. There was no need, for Jade stuck her dishevelled head out of the kitchen door.

'Muuuum, who's eaten all the Coco Pops?' Jade demanded, glaring accusingly down the garden at her brothers. She was still wearing her dressing gown, and her purple hair frizzed out in all directions. She looked, Emma thought amused, like one of those toy Trolls after it had been through the wash.

'I don't know,' Starling said dryly. 'Do you have a list of suspects?'

'Very funny, Mum.' Jade scowled.

'Aren't we the little ray of sunshine this afternoon,' her mother said, turning back to watch the boys at their game.

There was further clattering within as Jade retreated to find some other acceptable breakfast cereal.

Emma took a seat and sipped at her cup of tea. She had severely missed a decent cuppa in her travels around the world. It was nice to be able sit and sip at cup of tea after getting out of bed. That is, sipping a cup of tea with all the proper ingredients in it, anyway. In Mongolia, she'd tried it with mare's milk. It hadn't proved a success.

There was an oddly calming atmosphere about their home, Jade's minor tantrum aside. She hadn't expected to find peace here – it was a far cry from the juvenile chaos of their home in Buenos Aires.

Jade came out, triumphantly bearing a bowl of Frosties, and sat cross legged on the patio to eat them.

Starling turned to her eldest. 'Do you have any plans for the day?' she asked.

It seemed to be the opening Jade had been waiting for. 'Well...' she said.

'Go on.' There was an faint note of suspicion in Starling's voice.

'I thought, since it's a nice day and it's the holidays...'

'_Yes_...'

'Maybe we could have some friends over and have a barbeque.' Jade gave her mother a sweet smile.

Starling simply creased up. 'You mean,' she said chuckling, 'that since your father isn't here, can Jacob come round for dinner.'

Jade went slightly pink. 'Well,' he doesn't really like him, does he?'

'How do you know?' her mother asked. 'They've never met, have they?'

Jade shook her head, her wild purple hair shimmering in the sun. Emma wondered how she had managed to get away with such a shocking hairstyle in this household.

'They haven't met, but Dad dislikes him on principle.' Jade shrugged. 'I'm sure it will be fine when they do meet each other.'

Starling sniggered. '_If_, you mean.' Turning to Emma, she deigned to explain. 'You are bearing witness to part of what I think must be the greatest game of human chess ever played.'

Emma frowned. 'I'm sorry?'

Grinning at her blushing daughter, Starling explained further. 'The saga of Jade versus her father on the subject of young Master Jacob. Two chess masters couldn't do it better.'

'Mum!' Jade protested, going redder. It made for an interesting effect when combined with her unlikely hair.

'They have been going out now for, oh, nearly a year,' Starling continued. 'Hannibal has been sinply _dying_ to meet the young man, and he has visited this house often. However, his visits are always superbly timed to those moments when Hannibal isn't here, or when he is on his way out of the front door – in which case Jacob climbs over the back fence and comes in through the kitchen.'

Emma began to laugh.

'I can't play chess,' Jade said, laughing herself.

Starling shook her head, chuckling. 'Oh, but I think you can...'

'So, can we have a barbeque?' Jade got to her feet, clutching her empty cereal bowl.

'I would say 'ask you father', but... I suppose.'

'Excellent.' Jade grinned, and both Emma and Starling wondered at the gleam of pure evil in her maroon eyes.

They were both nearly deafened a moment later when she let loose a roar that wouldn't have sounded out of place coming from her father. 'Boys! Barbeque's on!'

Tycho and Gabriel came running up, Thomas trailing behind them. All were soaking wet and laughing uproariously.

Starling and Emma exchanged bemused glances as the two teenage boys looked at each other and then high-fived their older sister.

'Sweet,' Tycho said with a positively diabolical grin.

When they had all gone inside to change, Emma turned to Clarice with a thoughtful frown. 'I know I'm out of practice looking after your lot and maybe I'm being a little cynical, but... they're planning something.'

'I hear ya,' Emma's former employer's American drawl was more noticable when she was amused – or worried. 'But what?'

Emma laughed. 'With those three, anything is possible.'

'Don't remind me,' Starling said with a weary sigh. 'I suppose I had better see if I can wheedle anything out of the number one son. He's usually a little more restrained than the other two.'

Somehow, Emma found that slightly more disturbing than Tycho and Jade's general extrovertness. Gabriel, she mused, was much more like his father in temperament. Surely any scheme that involved Jade's natural leadership, Tycho's enthusiasm and Gabriel's quiet planning couldn't be good.

By the time the afternoon rolled around, Starling's policeman's radar was going into overdrive. She had not succeeded in getting anything out of Gabriel, indeed, her offspring had spent most of the day shut up in Jade's room scheming. Instead, Starling resigned herself to knowing about it when it happened, and got busy cleaning out the barbeque and digging out the second-best sausages.

Emma, by contrast, had not let herself worry about what they may or may not be planning, and had taken Thomas out for a walk in the sunshine. It was pleasant to be back in Britain, and not have to care about who might be lurking around the next corner. After all, she mused, it was pretty much a given that in this concrete jungle, the food chain only went down from the Lecters. Her ex husband didn't stand a chance.

She briefly entertained the thought that he might one day meet the doctor, and even better, annoy him – although she didn't honestly think that Ian Morton would have any trouble in that regard. The doctor was a creature of habit, and her ex husband, Emma devoutly believed, could drive the Dalai Lama to murder.

When they returned to the house, they found it full of teenagers. Gabriel and a group of boys his age had seized the sofa and the X-Box, and were engaged in a spirited four-player bout on some Star Wars game. Tycho swept Thomas off to the garden with a plate of chocolate biscuits. Jade was nowhere to be seen.

In the kitchen, Starling was watching her youngest son through the window. He had, it seemed, presented Thomas to a group of pretty, older girls who lounged round on the grass, watching a tall young man cooking burgers on the barbeque.

'Look at this,' Starling said as Emma joined her by the window.

Some of the girls were getting feminine over Thomas and his plate of biscuits. Tycho watched them with an indulgent expression far past his years.

Emma's eyebrows performed an involuntary climb to her hairline as she observed Starling's youngest son rubbing sun cream into the bare shoulders and back of one blonde beauty. His grin said it all.

'A regular Don Juan,' she said, laughing. 'I like the Thomas tactic, very cunning.'

'He is his father's son,' Clarice said, amused. 'He'll be charming them out of the trees in a couple of years.'

'In a couple of years?' Emma exclaimed. 'Are you kidding? They're swooning at his feet already...'

Starling chuckled. 'I may have to point out that I'm too young to be a grandmother.' She paused. 'Hannibal, on the other hand...'

Emma sniggered. 'Who's on cremation duty?'

'That would be the elusive Jacob,' Starling said.

Emma considered him for a moment. 'He looks a bit...' she struggled to find a word.

'Equine?' Clarice supplied helpfully.

'I was going to say _well bred_, but if you are going to call a spade a spade...'

'His family_ are_ hyphenated, it kind of goes with the territory. He's a nice lad, despite being deficient in the area of a chin.' Starling poured two glasses of wine and passed one to Emma. 'I don't suppose you would consider doing me a favour?'

Emma regarded her former employer with a modicum of suspicion. 'Need I say that depends on the favour?'

'Reconissance. I want to know what the orchestrator of this little soiree is doing shut up in her room. She dragged somebody up there, I don't know who.'

Emma laughed. 'What happened to innocent until proven guilty?'

Starling snorted. 'You know as well as I do that innocent is_ not_ in my daughter's vocabulary. She is a consummate schemer, and for once I'd quite like to get the drop on _her_.'

'Fair enough.' Emma set her wine glass down on the worktop. 'I see they're serving up outside, I'll go up and tell them the food's ready. She won't suspect me of an ulterior motive.'

The upstairs landing was dark, and there was the faintest smell of weed. Emma shook her head, amused. While the cat was away, the mice evidently came out for a smoke.

She halted outside Jade's room. There were voices, two, female. One was definately Jade. The other, Emma was surprised to note, had a definate American accent. They were laughing at something, and Emma distinctly heard the words 'and a banana!', followed by the sound of two teenage girls shrieking in laughter.

Emma tapped on the door, and the laughter instantly stopped. There was much muffled moving about and mumbled conversation. She waited long enough for them to hide the ashtray, and opened the door.

Jade sat at her computer with an all too innocent expression. Her hand moved over the keyboard, and the purple on black text on the screen vanished, replaced by Google. Another girl sat on the bed, a plump, friendly looking girl Emma suspected was about Jade's age. Interested, Emma glanced around. The place was a mess, which surprised her. There were also a number of knives on the desk, which didn't .

'They're serving up the food now,' Emma announced. There was a thin coil of blue smoke emanating from behind the half drawn curtain. 'I guess you girls must be hungry...'

'Starving,' Jade said blandly. 'C'mon, Theresa. Let's go.' She hurried past Emma, the plump girl following closely behind.

Emma shut the door again, and followed the girls downstairs.

Evening fell, and the party continued, the garden lights glowing like phosperence in the twilight. Having put Thomas to bed, Emma joined Starling in the kitchen. The sound of laughing teenagers was a pleasant counterpoint to the usual city noise audible in the background.

Starling was once again looking out the window, and the shadowed figures on the lawn. Suddenly, she turned to Emma with concern on her face. 'Have you seen Gabe and Tycho?'

Emma shook her head. 'No, not for an hour or so.'

'That's what I thought,' Starling said, a little grimly.

Emma came to the window and looked out. The huddle of teens on the lawn was raucous and, she suspected, more than a little drunk. 'Um... Have you been keeping track of that bevvy of blondes at all?'

Starling groaned and buried her face in her hands. 'I didn't even think of that.'

'Huh.' Emma found it difficult to suppress a grin, although she knew she only had this to look forward to in the future, it _was_ amusing watching Starling on tenterhooks. 'Well, if they have managed to, uh, rope a couple away from the herd, I doubt they've gone far.'

Starling grunted, muttering imprecations under her breath. 'I'm going to check in the bushes.' So saying, she strode to the back door and disappeared into the gathering gloom.

Jade chose that moment to make a re-appearence. Emma was suprised to realise that she had been lurking in the living room, rather than sitting outside with her friends.

'Where's your friend, Theresa?' Emma asked as the girl helped herself to wine.

Jade giggled. 'She's gone down to the shop for some more lemonade,' she said, grinning broadly.

Emma failed to see what was so funny, and told Jade so. Collapsing in a kitchen chair, the teenager started to laugh.

'You remember when I was little?'

'Vividly,' Emma said, dryly.

'I told you some people on the internet write stories about Mum and Dad. Romantic ones, mostly.' Jade quivered with barely suppressed laughter.

Emma thought back to her brief career as the children's hapless nanny. 'Yeah, I think I remember. You clutched that laptop as if were more precious to you than life itself.'

'She writes the most _God-awful _fanfiction,' Jade gasped, howling with laughter. 'Honestly... You _have to... _you _have_ to read it.' She folded her arms on the table and bowed over them, shaking with mirth. 'It has to be seen to be _believed._'

Emma regarded the girl, utterly nonplussed. 'Is that what this whole thing was about?'

'Kind of,' Jade hiccoughed, still giggling. 'I'll – no, I'll not explain. You might find out. You might not.' And she was off again, in hysterics. She got to her feet, red in the face from laughing too much. 'I'm hungry, I want a burger. You coming outside?'

Joining the party outside, Emma recieved a plate of carbonised hotdogs and a can of Carling from some youth or other. She hovered at the edge of the party, watching the dark form of Clarice Starling inspecting the bushes for her sons. She did not seem to be having a great deal of luck.

'What's Mum doing?' Jade asked at her elbow.

'Looking for your brothers, I think.' Emma sipped her beer to cover her amusement.

Jade giggled again. Her long-faced boyfriend joined her, slipping his arm around her waist. Jade gave him a kiss on the cheek.

'Are we expecting your father back tonight?' he asked. He had a nice voice, Emma was surprised to note. She had been expecting something of the donkey variety, in keeping with his aristocratic heritage.

'He's staying in Oxford tonight,' Jade said, smiling up at him.

As soon as she said it, Emma felt a suspicion that rapidly grew into a certainty. It was such a strong feeling that she turned and scanned the dark garden for mysterious figures. She should really have looked at the buddelia bush behind her, for exactly seven seconds after Jade uttered the fateful phrase, a dark figure detached itself from the shadows there.

'Good evening,' a smooth and cultured voice purred in her ear.

Emma was proud of herself for not leaping out of her skin. It was the first time she had survived one of his little jokes with her dignity intact. Jade, on the other hand, leapt nearly a foot in the air. She came down poised for flight, like a startled deer. However it was too late, for a pleasantly smiling Dr Lecter was waiting with the air of a man who expected, nay _demanded_, to be introduced.

Emma grinned to herself._ Checkmate_, she thought.


End file.
